Essential Daily Contact Lens checks

5 essential daily checks for contact lens wearers

Wearing contact lenses is a simple hassle free way of seeing clearly without the need to wear glasses.

To get the best out of your contact lenses and keep your eyes healthy here are our suggestions for your daily routine and the best part is they should only take a couple of minutes.

1. Check the lensAsk yourself “Is my contact lens damaged, chipped or cloudy?" Hopefully the answer to all these questions is NoYour lens should be intact, clear and have a good shape. If your lens looks damaged or cloudy, then discard the lens and use a fresh one.

2. Can you see well now your lenses are in?The answer should be a resounding yes.If you can not see clearly with your lens in, then you should ask yourself the following 2 questions-

a. Is the lens inside out? If the lens is moving around too much when you blink, then the answer is probably yes, remove the lens, check it’s shape, make sure it’s the right way round, clean with fresh solution and reinsert.

b. Is the lens in the correct eye?If you have a different power for each of your contact lenses it is easy to mix them up and put the left lens in the right eye or vise versa.Take the lenses out, clean the lens with fresh solution and reinsert in the correct eye.To help prevent this in future it’s a good idea to get in the habit of always inserting the same lens first.

3. Do your eyes look good?Once your contact lenses are in and settled, have a quick look in the mirror, ask yourself do my eyes look good? There should be no blurriness or redness. If your eyes feel gritty, sandy, or irritated, remove your lenses.You can try a fresh clean pair or re clean your lenses and try again, if your eyes still feel irritated, blurry or gritty remove the lens and contact your optometrist.

4. Have you got a back up pair of lenses?If you are going to be out of the house then a back up pair of contact lenses is a great idea.We suggest having a spare pair at work, in your handbag/wallet and in the car, that way you will never be caught out should you lose a lens, get grit in your eye or decide to stay out for the night.

5. Have you got enough solution and lenses for the next few days?You don’t want to run out of Contact lenses or solution as this is the most common cause of people over-wearing their lenses, and reusing solution can lead to an increased risk of infections.Have you got a spare pair of lenses should your contact lenses get damaged or lost?Ordering contact lenses online is quick, cheap and convenient, but you need to allow a couple of days just in case the postal system is running a little slow.

With daily disposable contact lenses you use a fresh lens in fresh solution every day, and should you chip or split a lens the cost of disposing of it and replacing with a new one is minimal. This is one of the reasons most experts agree that daily contact lenses are the first lens of choice for contact lens wearers.